Five Architects, Five State-of-the-Art Museums
Art, engineering, and visitor experience meet as five of the world's greatest architects turn their genius to creating new public buildings
By
Ellen Gamerman
Oct. 1, 2014 12:16 p.m. ET Wall Street Journal
Aspen Art Museum Aspen Art Museum/Michael Moran/OTTO.
Star architects are descending on the world's museums, and as these world-renowned designers unveil their visions for a wave of new modern cultural institutions, they are entering uncharted territory—stylistically, often, and literally, too.
Daniel Libeskind is finishing his first building in mainland China with the Zhang Zhidong and Modern Industrial Museum in Wuhan. This year's Pritzker Prize winner, Shigeru Ban, just completed his first permanent U.S. museum with the newly opened Aspen Art Museum in Aspen, Colo. Tadao Ando recently wrapped up his first rural American museum project at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Mass.
The stakes are high: Frank Gehry's Biomuseo in Panama has been nearly 15 years in the making, while Renzo Piano's new building for the Whitney Museum of American Art carries one of the museum world's heftiest price tags.
The buildings are a study in contrasts. The Biomuseo preens at its waterfront setting, with overlapping panels in toucan colors, while a new building at the Clark Art Institute uses neutral tones to blend into its natural location. The Clark structure hides £part of its bulk underground, while the Zhang Zhidong and Modern Industrial Museum hoists its exhibit space into the air. The Aspen Art Museum features a huge woven screen veiling two facades, while the Whitney uses so much exterior glass that passersby on the street will be able to spot some of the art inside the galleries.
Here, a look at five museum projects shaking up the architectural terrain.
Biomuseo Gehry Partners, LLP
BIOMUSEO
MISSION The new museum, which sits along the Pacific Ocean entrance to the Panama Canal, explores the explosion of plant and animal life that occurred during the formation of the Panamanian isthmus and the impact of those prehistoric events on world biodiversity. The museum's first galleries are set to open this week.
WHO DID IT Los Angeles architect Frank Gehry
BUILDING BUDGET $60 million
MATERIALS Concrete, plaster, glass and painted aluminum panels
BACK STORY To find his inspiration for the museum's design, Mr. Gehry turned to three million years ago, and the joining of two continents: "The oceans became separated, and over the years new species of fish developed," he says. "The animals of North and South America collided. Some survived; others adapted, and this museum tells that story."
COLOR CODE The building's rooftops are ablaze in a palette that includes bright reds, blues, and yellows. "The colors were responding to the Atlantic side of the country, where the native population primarily lives, says Mr. Gehry. "Their world tends to be more colorful." This is the first project in Latin America for Mr. Gehry, whose wife is Panamanian.
AIR GEHRY Copa Airlines, a Panamanian carrier, covered one of its planes with a Biomuseo pattern.
Clark Art Institute Jeff Goldberg/Esto
CLARK ART INSTITUTE
WHAT'S NEW In July, the Clark—an art museum and institution of higher education and research—unveiled a new exhibitions center and a renovated museum building, a one-acre reflecting pool and new landscaping across its 140-acre campus in the Berkshires.
WHO DID IT Japanese architect Tadao Ando created a new centerpiece structure, the Clark Center, and New York firm Selldorf Architects renovated another building. The Clark's larger overhaul, which encompasses two new buildings and two renovated structures in total, will wrap up next year.
MATERIALS Mr. Ando's building features architectural concrete, steel, glass and red granite
BUILDING BUDGET $145 million for the entire project
BIG IDEA Attempting to preserve the natural feel of the setting, Mr. Ando built below ground, submerging an exhibition gallery and bringing in sunshine through light wells. A large reflecting pool serves as a gathering place, says the Clark's director, Michael Conforti, who adds, "It's like being in a plaza at the top of an Italian hill town."
IF MONEY WERE NO OBJECT… "I don't think that an unlimited budget always makes good architecture," Mr. Ando says, adding that architects can stay in their budget and still deliver what they have promised. "There is a way to do this without compromising."
HOW IT FEELS The design attempts to heighten each guest's awareness of nature. "I wish to create a space that will motivate visitors and artists to be free minded and creative," Mr. Ando says.
Zhang Zhi Dong and Modern Industrial Museum Alex Chan
ZHANG ZHIDONG AND MODERN INDUSTRIAL MUSEUM
MISSION Projected to open next spring or summer, exhibits will attempt to tell the story of the central Chinese region of Wuhan, its industry and the life of Zhang Zhidong, a 19th-century leader celebrated in China for helping to usher in an era of modernization.
WHO DID IT New York-based architect Daniel Libeskind
MATERIALS Steel, concrete and anti-reflective stainless-steel panels
BUILDING BUDGET $24.4 million
BIGGEST ROADBLOCK Local labor had little to no experience with architectural complexities of the building, which features a curved, suspended form resting on vertical towers. "Our team was on the ground for several months guiding the process," says Stefan Blach, the principal architect in charge of the project from Mr. Libeskind's office.
IF MONEY WERE NO OBJECT… "Anything more would be excessive," says Mr. Blach, though he adds that it would have been great to buy the parkland adjacent to the site.
HOW IT FEELS Visitors "will climb the main staircase as if being beamed into a ship," Mr. Blach says. "Once inside the exhibition areas, the visitor will feel engulfed in the experience of the building—a bit like how Jonah would have felt inside the whale."
This year's Pritzker Prize winner, Shigeru Ban, just completed his first permanent U.S. museum with the newly opened Aspen Art Museum in Aspen, Colo. Aspen Art Museum/© Michael Moran/OTTO
THE ASPEN ART MUSEUM
WHAT'S NEW The contemporary art museum moved from its old home in a converted hydroelectric plant to a new building with three times the gallery space.
WHO DID IT Shigeru Ban, the Japanese architect known for designing innovative refugee shelters for use after natural disasters.
MATERIALS The exterior screen is made with Prodema, comprised of paper laminated in resin and covered in thin sheets of wood.
BUILDING BUDGET $45 million, including land
INNOVATION Mr. Ban tried a new design for the museum's roof, a structure of interconnecting wooden beams that joins with almost no metal hardware.
ROADBLOCK Museum director Heidi Zuckerman Jacobson at first resisted Mr. Ban's idea of bringing natural light into the gallery spaces but changed her mind after the architect took her on a tour of museums that did—and didn't—incorporate sunlight. "He let me see for myself that when there's natural light with the art, it sings," she says.
NOD TO THE SLOPES Mr. Ban wants visitors to start on the top floor, with its rooftop sculpture garden at the base of Ajax Mountain, and then descend through the museum. It is "an analog to the skiing experience," says Zachary Moreland, senior project architect at Shigeru Ban's firm.
The Whitney Museum Tim Schenck
THE WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART
WHAT'S NEW The trove of modern and contemporary art is relocating from New York's Upper East Side to a new downtown building set to open this spring.
WHO DID IT Italian architect Renzo Piano
MATERIALS Glass, steel painted gray blue to pick up the light along the Hudson River
BUILDING BUDGET $422 million, including land
SURPRISE The structure includes outdoor galleries, with an exterior stair that will allow visitors to walk up and down the outside of the building, fire-escape style.
OFFICE SPACE "There's hardly a museum in the country that doesn't have its art handlers in the basement—ours are up in the air, directly opposite the special-exhibition gallery," says Whitney director Adam Weinberg, adding that curators, conservators and other staffers working with the art will be situated just off the galleries.
FLOAT FACTOR The glass-encased ground floor creates a feeling that the building is lifted up and floating along the river, says Elisabetta Trezzani, a partner with Renzo Piano Building Workshop. "It's really flying," she says.
HOW IT FEELS Architectural such as the building's profile—a play on the upside-down stepped shape of the old uptown structure—are meant to evoke the museum's former home. "I want people to say, 'It feels like the Whitney,'" says Mr. Weinberg.
